This, that, and the other

I was all set up on this the other day, having typed a couple of paragraphs, when I heard, "Sweetheart! I need your help!" I left the browser window up. After helping and doing the rest of the stuff I do, it was down again. And all my beautiful, heartfelt words were gone. So you'll just have to take these.

May I just say that I really don't dig the "new" stuff that Xanga is doing? They've taken away many of the capabilities that were available before. Not. Thrilled. I think I may just move this on off to some other venue. But for no, I will press on.

* A note from another browser. The problems with Xanga which I have been referencing? They aren't so much a problem with Xanga as a problem with my browser, Google Chrome. I will note that I want to do Xanga updates on Firefox. Sorry Xanga!

So, a lot has been going on around here. Mostly snow. Lots of snow. Lots of shoveling because, as I discovered this week, if one does not shovel one's driveway, one does not have access to the AAA service that one has paid perfectly good money for all these years. Who knew? The last time we had the van go off the driveway (for that was the crisis the other night which precipitated my one and only's cry for assistance), the lady tow truck driver pulled her big truck into our snow-choked driveway and winched that sucker back up for us.

This time, the AAA dispatcher told us that we needed to have the snow cleared from the driveway. Riiiight. Our driveway is massive. I'm sure we could easily park 30 cars on it. Of course, we couldn't so easily remove them, but there ya go. It's huge. Nevertheless, we attempted to remove as much snow as possible before the AAA guy showed up, which he did, right as Friend Husband was leaving for work. FH talked to Tow Truck Guy and TTG said he didn't think he could pull the van up because of the place where it was. Which was exactly the place that the lady TTG pulled it out of before. Whatever. He told FH that he'd go get something and come back. And he drove off.

A couple of hours later, I finally called AAA and asked them where TTG was. The dispatcher told me that TTG had reported that "we" had left so he didn't return. I told AAA Dispatcher Gal that, while my husband had indeed left, I was still patiently waiting in my house for TTG. AAADG made a note of that and said she'd send someone else out. Then she asked me if the driveway was clear for them. When I told her that it was the same amount of "clear" it had been the last time TTG had been out here, she informed me that they would do nothing if the driveway was not clear of snow and ice. Uh huh.



Well, I did what I knew I needed to. I got bundled up and began to shovel. And I shoveled for what seemed to be hours. Wait! It was hours! And finally, when TTG2 showed up, I had managed to clear a small area for him to park his mighty truck of power. He winched that baby right on up and told me to drive it wherever I was going to leave it so he could make sure I didn't drive it off the driveway again after he left. TTG2 was my hero. After telling him he was a beautiful person, I went in and took a 2 hour nap wherein I did not move an iota.

Over the next couple of days, I continued to shovel and scrape. Yesterday I finally cleared the 75% mark. The rest of the driveway can stay like that until the rain washes it off, I don't really care. I'm going to take my newly buff body into the house. My work is done here.

Awaiting the White Death, with spewage

We're supposed to be getting a "big winter storm" here soon. Honestly, I don't know why people in Cincinnati get their knickers in a twist about snow. It's not as though they never have it here! It's not a surprise...get over it. It snows in Ohio in the wintertime!

Anyway, you can't get into a grocery store right now without doing your best defensive driver-bumper car champion thing with the carts. Getting gas is a special experience. Going anywhere is a special sort of misery. So we've been sitting around the house. Especially since the twins have been sick.

David, of course, has his asthma thing going on. Yesterday he started throwing up again. He does this not infrequently when his asthma is very bad because he gets choked up. So we did the asthma routine with him, he went back to sleep, no problem. Eventually his twin sister started puking as well. Oops, sounds like that might not be an asthma situation. So we canceled our planned trip to the pediatric urgent care for a nebulizer treatment. I'm waiting to see if he's still breathing badly when he wakes up to see if he needs to keep his 11:15 appointment this morning.

If we get to leave the house for that appointment, I'd like to leave early and go to the mall. As a general rule, I dislike the mall, but I wanted to get 1) a calendar for this year and 2) something for a friend's birthday which is easier to find at the mall. If he doesn't get to go, I won't go to the mall yet again. At what point does the calendar kiosk close? I really need a new calendar! Where does the time go?

So that's my boring life. Don't get me wrong, boring is preferable to exciting, especially when exciting involves hospitals or crises.

Chapter 5: In which our heroine learns to be a "fun mom"

I have long maintained that I am just not a fun mom. Somewhere between Abby and the twins, I just lost the ability/impetus/desire to be "fun". Friend Husband occasionally encourages me to be spontaneous and fun with the girls and I think, "Sure...I can *try* but it just doesn't work out for me that way." Occasionally I can break out and be totally manic and fun. Yesterday was one of those days. And I have the scrapes and bruises to prove it.

Yesterday was co-op day and we also got to meet Friend Cindy and her lovely daughters at the McDonald's Playplace to let them burn off some steam. Since our world is currently pretty ice-covered (from tromping the snow), it is not very safe for them to get outside and run around. So the twins got to play and Friend Cindy and I got to talk. Yeehaw!

On Sunday, Philip had told David about the sledding hill they have behind their house and suggested that he might want to come over and play. Naturally, Dave was ON it. Like immediately. We told him he couldn't go Sunday but I resigned myself to taking them over there on Monday and playing for a little while. When we started, we had so much fun that I realized I needed to get the big sisters and come back. So we did. We sledded for about 2 ½ hours and left only when we'd burned most of the snow off the slopes (not too fun to sled on rocks). And we had a blast...and I got major fun mom points.





And this morning I am feeling every one of my 41 years plus a few extra. The sledding hill is actually the hill down the bottom of their walk-out basement So, since my added weight made sure that I went faster and further, it was rare for me not to hit either the retaining wall or the French doors at the bottom. I think I did pretty well with catching myself so that it didn't do as much damage as it could have but I still managed to achieve a pressure burn near my elbow and some sore arms from breaking my descent. And I fell down more times than I can count. Sarah even said, "You're having a hard day, Mom!" Ice is not a medium which is kind to one's attempts to climb hills. So my knees are pretty bruised up. Happily, I was the only one who sustained injuries besides sore muscles.







And Friend Priscilla, being the consummate hostess that she is, came home from work and made us hot chocolate and hot cookies. Does she rock or what?







As they say in the South, "A good time was had by all."

There's no business like snow business...

Yes, terribly cheesy title, but there it is. And it would have been more relevant yesterday, I think, but I ran out of time to blog yesterday, what with Friend Husband being iced in with us and all the normal stuff going on.

Well, it's been quite some time since I wrote the above and now I've got to split. But I did make a slideshow of some snow images that will tell you a bit about what's been going on. Have a swell day and sorry that I don't have time to say more! Gotta shovel the driveway of doom so we can go to church tonight.

Minus Five

That's what the radio guy said this morning when we got up.  Brrrrr....

Meat froze solid in the back of my van yesterday.  Big hunks of cow.  Yow.

Bathtub toys were frozen to my tub this morning.  That would be in the house.

Lucy the Wonder Dog was put into her insulated crate in the garage last night with a heater directed inside.  She escaped and was running amok in the garage.  Friend Husband went outside to figure out why she was barking.  Apparently she was cold and wanted him to put her back into the crate.  She must be the stupidest animal I've ever owned.

It is very cold today.  And not just in space.*




* It's a Trekkie reference.  If you don't understand it, you won't understand it.

I am sick. And a tag. And no Thursday Thirteen :-(

Well, I got to see part of the lunar eclipse yesterday, before totally collapsing. Bummer that this illness had to bonk me over the head last night. Oh well.

I don't know exactly what's wrong. I think it might just be a sinus infection now, but it really had me going last night. Friend Husband (who is not 100% himself) stayed home from his job to do mine so I can get some rest. He and 80% of the children are at the store right now with probably 100% of our little town. Yep, more white death on the way tonight. Lovely.

Oh, and we have no heat in the house. Did I mention that? No? Well, it's true. We're having to wrap up the fish tanks in blankets to retain their heat and the bowls are now residing on my heating pad, so hopefully they'll stay alive until we get more oil in our oil tank. We overestimated the amount of oil in there by 1 day. They're supposed to come fill it today so hopefully we'll be ok for the storm tonight.

Thanks for the helpful boy comments and suggestions. Sounds like I need to make him burn off energy quite often and be more lightly punitive more often. We'll give it a whirl. He was "better" yesterday and Daddy is wearing him out today so he should be fine. (He so loves his Daddy!)

Lori (the other one, not me) tagged me with this:

Here are the Rules:

You must post the rules before you give your answers. You must list one fact about yourself for each letter of your middle name. Each fact must begin with that letter. If you don't have a middle name, just use your maiden name. After you've been tagged, post a new blog with your middle name and answers. At the end of your post, you need to tag one person for each letter of your middle name. (Be sure to leave them a comment telling them they've been tagged and need to read your blog for details).

Ample. 'Nuff said.

Nutty.

Neat-o (this one from Friend Husband, my brain is really fried)

(How many thousands of "Lori Ann's" were there in the 60's? Yeesh.)

Ok, I'm tagging Daughter Sarah, Daughter Rachel, and Cousin Monica. How's that for nepotism? Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to saunter off to bed. Maybe I'll find my brain there. It seems to be AWOL.

It's Monday and it's cold...

Yes, I know that there are many other colder places on the earth but this is the place where I am and I'm here to tell you that it is cold. It's freezing today. Tonight, we have a winter weather warning. It is supposed to snow, then sleet atop the snow. Yick. The light bulb that is in the house of Lucy the Wonder Dog went out at some point and she was all shivery yesterday. Likewise, Elof, the Foster Dog was cold. It was so cold last night that we took the chance on putting them in the same crate (they really hadn't had much contact) and leaving them there in the garage all night. They seemed to pass a comfortable night and there were no visible marks on either one of them.

We have the latch to Lucy's tie-out taped shut because Lucy being Lucy, she finds a way to break off it at all times. Last night, of course, it was cold and we couldn't get the tape off the latch to get her into the garage. Dealing with Lucy requires great imagination and teamwork anyway because she has a tendency to run off given any opportunity. Finally, Friend Husband took out his knife and started peeling away at the layers of tape but even that wasn't progressing fast enough. Being the proponent of the "brute force method" that I am, I finally just took her collar off, told him to open the door to the garage and carried her in there. It apparently had not occurred to Friend Husband to try that. You should have seen the look on his face!

David seems to be having a pretty bad relapse of his nephrotic syndrome. It isn't responding to the increased dosage of steroid like we had hoped and today his eyelids are almost puffed shut. If/when he gets back down to an acceptable level of protein spillage, we have to go back in to Children's and get him put on a second-line medication to help the problem. I had hoped that it wouldn't progress to that point but there we are. In the meantime, he's gained 4 pounds in a couple of days. And the increased dosage of steroids makes him mean and hyper. He was up wandering around the house at 4:30 this morning.

So, here are some memes. I have to go up and bake now. Party's at my house this afternoon!

Manic Monday
In honor of Valentine's Day this week:

What is the most romantic movie that you've ever seen? Probably The Cutting Edge. Of course, I don't watch a lot of movies, so that could explain a lot.

If you could be the lover of any person alive other than your current lover, who would you pick? None. I'm not a "lover" sort of a person. I'm more of a "wife" sort of a person and I certainly couldn't imagine being married to anyone other than Friend Husband.

What scents remind you of a loved one? Well, I guess the scent of that person. Friend Husband smells sort of like water. Hard to explain, I guess. His personal scent is very fresh. I've already mentioned that my oldest daughter sometimes smells like my mother, which is weird yet comforting. Sometimes I'll catch a whiff of a perfume like the ones my mom used to wear and that reminds me of her. The smell of buttered hot rice and brown bread remind me of my grandmother.


Question of the Week:

And the Question of the Week is…

What is something memorable that you experienced as a child or teenager that your children will probably never get to experience?

There are a lot of interesting comments about this at the actual site. For me, it was being able to roam the neighborhood all day without checking in. I can't tell you what a sense of freedom that gave me (and probably my brother as well). We also spent months in the summer at my grandmother's house in the small town of Brady, where we could roam at will. My children will never spend months with their grandparents.

Curious as a Cat

Week Number 104

1) If you could know the location (i.e., heaven, hell, other) of any one person's soul, whose would you ask about?

My mom's.

2) When was the last time you literally screamed at the top of your lungs? I actually do that on a regular basis. Yesterday, Keziah was carrying around this giant rubber snake that is very realistic. To amuse her, I faked a freak-out. It was quite satisfying. I also scream when people startle me. Just ask Friend Husband.

3) What do you think is the most beautiful word in the English language? The least beautiful? Oh boy, this is tough. It's hard to separate the loveliness of the sound of the word and the connotation.

4) What is the most cowardly thing you've ever done? I've been pretty timid of late and let Friend Husband take care of issues dealing with the outside world. I guess that's cowardly but not quite craven.

5) Show and Tell. What comes to mind first when you see this picture? Or, tell a story if it reminds you of one.

What first comes to mind is "Oh, that looks warm...I need to hold my icy hands near it!"

I guess that's it...not too many Monday memes. Happy Monday, everyone!